I had the two tickets to ZZ Top that midweek night and Alberto had the 1988 Mustang 5.0. He really was a good person and I had always liked him. But he was also the guy with the car, which meant he got taken advantage of by just about everybody who didn’t have an automobile. That’s pretty much how it went in those days. You’re a true and loyal friend: great. You’ve got a sweet ride: now we’re talking. And even though I was sixteen, almost seventeen, my parent’s had sagely disallowed me from the teenage cultural ritual of obtaining my drivers license. So it was Alberto and I, headed to the Cow Palace, a well aged, cavernous, unexceptional, multi-purpose venue. But to me it might as well have been the Royal Albert Hall.
We took Mission Street through the City not because it was the fastest route but because he knew a liquor store that would sell us booze, no questions asked. He had done it a million times, he said. We pulled up in front of the store and I offered him five bucks.
“Don’t worry about it man,” he said graciously. “You got the tix.”
“Right on,” I replied.
A few minutes later and he returned with a twelve pack of Bud and a fifth of peppermint Schnapps: more than enough for two youngsters out to catch a substantial buzz. We each cracked a beer in the car as we finished the last short portion of our journey.
On the way, we talked casually about adolescent nonsense, but in a way we did not usually. It was just the two of us, unencumbered by the usual pressure of the group. We could be ourselves. At that time, it was a moral failing of mine to be unduly influenced by the behavior, actions and opinions of others. Because they somewhat marginalized Alberto, so had I. But now, one on one, I was released from this pressure. Maybe he was as well. In any event, as the first beer settled in our stomachs we settled in with one another.
We obtained a good spot in the parking lot close to the exit and got out. It was about an hour before the opening act was going on, so we had plenty of time. We each took a big hit off the Schnapps, finished our first beer and cracked our second. Pretty soon we were both through four beers and the Schnapps had about two swigs left in it. We grabbed one more beer, leaving one each for when we got back, and headed toward the building.
“Time to boogie,” Alberto declared.
Along the way I checked out the crowd. The first thing I noticed is how much older than us everybody was. Now, it wasn’t like the time I saw Dave Brubeck with my family at Davies Symphony Hall: that was an ancient crowd. But most of the people there were in their 30’s and 40’s, even a few in their 50s’. It was a rough and ready bunch, working class dudes in jeans with thick black moustaches, arm around their old lady’s waist, half-hippies smoking joints, long hairs from back in the day. There were a few cowboy types, complete with the Stetson hats, shit kicker boots and oversized belt buckles, chugging beers and grinning at one another while they sat on the tailgate of their Chevy truck. I even observed a few older African American guys, well dressed fellas wearing suits and ties as if they were going to the Met. I don’t know what kind of people I had expected to see, but the diversity of humanity somehow impressed me.
Music filled the air, and it reflected the variety of the crowd. The cowboys were playing Hank Williams Jr. A group of twenty-somethings was blasting Prince’s “1999.” I heard the high-pitched guitar wail of BB King from somewhere in the distance. Of course, I also noticed several tunes from the “Eliminator” album, which had almost inexplicably dominated the American music and music-video culture in the mid-1980’s. “Gimmie All Your Lovin’,” “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man”: I heard these tunes several times in the short period during which we traveled from the Mustang to the doors of the edifice.
Once inside, more music blared. The opening act had already begun. I had heard the name Jeff Healey before and I associated it with rock music. And I had never seen the movie Roadhouse, although it had been released about a year earlier. So I was surprised to see what I ultimately realized was a blind man hunched over a slide guitar doing things I had frankly never seen or heard before. I was transfixed on him, and he was the opener. It would have been enough for me if he were the front line act.
Time went by quickly. The whole scene consumed me: the blues-rock music, the multi-celled organism which was the growing crowd, the smell of marijuana in the air, the camaraderie and the novelty of it all. I felt reborn, fresh, new. I was aware of my own becoming. And I know how ridiculous that sounds, in such an essentially banal milieu. But that is how I felt at the time.
I lost track of Alberto. At some point he came and gave me a large beer in a plastic cup. I have no idea how he obtained it. He seemed to be doing all right on his own. As instantaneously as he had materialized, he disappeared. Jeff Healey finished his set to the mostly polite applause that opening acts generally receive.
I had been standing to stage right, on a raised portion of the seating area. But in the bowl of the stadium there was the general admission. I think the whole show was GA; this is how I remember all the shows I attended at the Cow Palace. I decided to descend onto the floor. Just as I did so, the band took the stage and the crowd roared as one. The power trio meandered about the stage for a moment, ostensibly checking wires and connections, but I believe their real reason was to prolong the anticipation. Whatever their intentions, that was the effect they had. And then, in a flash, the music hit us like a ton of bricks, loud and heavy, simple, raw and completely understood by the audience.
I wandered around on the floor, maybe eighty feet from the stage. Any closer and the crowd got really tight. I wasn’t interested in squeezing into that mass of humanity; I wanted to watch from a distance, to have the experience from a position just outside the molten core.
I don’t know how much time went by, but it was probably thirty minutes to an hour. The band began playing the song “Tush,” while a dozen or so bikini-clad beauties marched in a single file line across the stage. At this point, I noticed a small group of very tough looking bikers light up what could only be described in those days as a “pinner” joint. From what I could see, they were unaffiliated with any known motorcycle club, as they wore leather vests without any recognizable patches or insignia. But they were bikers for sure: straight off the set of the movie “Mask.”
The thing I noticed that seemed strange to me was that the joint they were smoking, in addition to being very thin, was also of a brownish hue, like a marshmallow after being properly turned over a campfire. I had never seen anything like it before. But what the fuck did I know, anyway?
The music drove through us like a massive power drill. The bikers rocked forward and backward. They were yelling to one another over the deafening sound. I heard one shout out: “These guys are bad to the bone.”
Indeed they were. I was amused at his comment as I stared at this outlaw slice of Americana in front of me with which I was, at that time, completely unfamiliar. As if he felt my gaze in the back of his head, one of the bikers, the one who had yelled out, turned and looked at me, the roach of the still burning joint in his right hand. He reached out and handed it to me, our forefingers and thumbs pinching together to make sure that the truncated baton was successfully passed. I hit the joint hard and coughed a little. It tasted funny. I offered it back to my host. He waved me off with his hand and gave me a big thumbs up. I hit it again.
A moment later I saw him give this knowing look to his cohorts. They began nodding and pointing in my direction. They were laughing, but it seemed good-natured enough and didn’t make me feel awkward or anything of the sort. I just thought they were getting a kick out of smoking-out a pretty square looking teen. I smiled back at them and left it at that.
It did not take long for me to realize that something was terribly wrong. The first thing I noticed was I could not feel my fingers. Just after this, the music lost all its definition and became a slowing pulsating “wah-wah” in my ears, oscillating between extreme volume and absolute, deep space silence. It was something like the sound which would accompany a beacon from a lighthouse as the light turned round, but more quickly than in real life. Anyway, this is how it seemed in my mind’s eye.
My field of vision began creeping in from both sides, little by little. In a minute or so it had narrowed to approximately fifty percent of what it was normally. A sickness welled up within me. I realized I had to escape the floor and began stumbling toward one of the gaping exits. I ran square into a stranger; he threw me aside violently. I continued my march toward the light, toward some semblance of openness. When I reached it I realized that nothing had been achieved. My vision was down to almost nothing, a mere slice of light, shadowy images of people passing. I was walking up the ramp toward the outer corridors. I reached the highest point in the ramp, which comprised the exit and thought maybe I was going to make a successful escape.
Suddenly I began careening downhill. I had lost all control of my body. It seemed I ran for an age, a Bizarro Sisyphus. I struggled to keep my feet beneath me until I hit a wall and crumbled to the ground.
I awoke on a thin mattress on a concrete floor. I could hear the music muffled through the walls, which was comforting. My hair was matted with sweat. A young woman, probably in her mid to late twenties, came over and looked down on me.
“Hello,” she said pleasantly.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“The Haight-Ashbury free clinic,” she responded. “We set up at all the concerts. Guys like you keep us awfully busy.”
“Oh,” I said, a little embarrassed. I noticed that she was quite pretty in a gaunt kind of way. But it was obvious she paid little attention to her looks, her chestnut hair was straight and tied in a ponytail and she wore no makeup. Also, she had that sunken countenance of the Vegan, a face that belied missing nutrients in her diet.
“What did you take?” she asked.
“I only had a little bit to drink,” I minimized. Oh: and I took like two hits off a joint that was passed to me.”
“Passed by whom?”
“I don’t know. Some guys I was standing next to.”
She shined one of those little flashlights into my eyes. “Your pupils are saucers. Looks to me like you may have smoked a chip.”
“Chip?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“That’s a joint laced with PCP. Angel dust.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yes,” she replied. “You need to be more careful who you use drugs with.”
She looked down at a pad of paper she was holding and wrote some notes. As she did so, I could hear the band tear into the opening licks to “La Grange.” I was suddenly filled with energy and jumped to my feet.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked incredulously.
“This is my favorite ZZ Top song!” I ran for the door. As I exited I heard her call after me.
“You’re not allowed to leave!”
I found Alberto wandering about on the floor after the lights came on and the crowd was thinning out.
“I was partying with two hot chicks,” he informed me. “They told me we could come over to their place afterwards but I lost track of them.” His eyes searched all around but to no avail. “Pretty great show, huh?”
“Fucking fantastic,” I replied.
“Hey you don’t look very good,” he said. “You’re so…pale.”
“Really?” I said nonchalantly. “Well, why don’t we get out of here.”
On our way home we stopped at McDonalds. I was not hungry. As Alberto ate his Quarter Pounder I gazed into the glow of the Golden Arches, mesmerized. They were shimmering like yellow, faceted diamonds in the night, so beautiful and grand as they rose from the filthy Earth into the cold, crystalline heavens above. Theirs was a guiding light for travelers near and far, I realized. A moment later I thought I heard them broadcasting something into my brain, some kind of essential, portentous message that was almost discernable and yet incomprehensible.
It was then I realized how high I was.
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